


lord have mercy on my rough and rowdy ways

by chickenfree



Series: pff bingo 2019 [4]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: God's Own Country AU (alleged), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, farm au, farm typical discussion of injuries and gross stuff, love writing anything where i can start a tag with "farm typical"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 13:40:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21100361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chickenfree/pseuds/chickenfree
Summary: Phil gets a whole handful together and stands up, squinting a bit under the warm glow of the sun. It’s beautiful out here. The birds are chattering, and the grass is green, and one of the boy’s sheep is bleating along the hill.“It’s like something out of a fairytale, isn’t it?”





	lord have mercy on my rough and rowdy ways

Phil was just meant to be going down the road to pick up the eggs from the farm that his grandma insists sells the only good eggs in Yorkshire, and then he was meant to turn around and go straight back, but, well. Best laid plans, and all. Instead he’s here, crouched by his parked car, picking daisies while this strange boy watches him from over a rocky wall. 

They’ve talked a bit, about where Phil should look, but mostly he’s just hovering while Phil – defaces his roadside, or whatever.

Phil gets a whole handful together and stands up, squinting a bit under the warm glow of the sun. It’s beautiful out here. The birds are chattering, and the grass is green, and one of the boy’s sheep is bleating along the hill.

“It’s like something out of a fairytale, isn’t it?”

The boy stares back at him, blank, considering. 

“Sure,” he says eventually. He gives Phil a smile that doesn’t look entirely friendly. 

\--

“What are you doing here?” he finally asks, the third time Phil visits. He’s not even building the wall any more, just leaning on his forearms and studiously picking at a scab on his hand. Phil could ask him the same question.

Phil shrugs. “Picking flowers, mate. My grandma likes them.”

“Haven’t you picked them all?”

“No? Have you looked?”

He holds up today’s daisies for the boy’s consideration. He doesn’t say much in response, but Phil’s come to expect that.

“Have you got a job?” the boy says, after a minute.

“No,” Phil says, carefully. He hates that question. “I just graduated. I’m applying, but my grandma needed help around the house, so I’m here for a bit. I pay off my room and board in daisies.”

The boy makes a little huffing sound that might be a laugh. Phil hazards a glance just long enough to see his cheek dimple.

\--

He’s late, the fifth time. Phil’s already running late, himself, spent most of the drive down worrying that he’d miss him entirely, or that he would have to leave just as Phil arrived. Instead, he sits in the daisy patch and waits, and waits, and waits. He’s already collected a handful, and bound it with a bit of rubber band that he keeps in the car. Now he’s moved down a bit and started on another handful.

Just as he’s about to open his hand and let the flowers scatter, he sees the boy come trudging over the hill, head bent against the wind. 

When he comes closer, he looks – awful. Which isn’t exactly a word Phil would usually use for him. There’s bags under his eyes, and he’s pale and somehow even more gaunt than the last time. His thin jumper is stained at the neck, and drawn down tight over his fists, which are balled up and tucked back under his arms. 

He doesn’t say hi, just stands silently, staring blankly at the wall, swaying a bit.

“D’you want a ride back to your house?” Phil ventures. At least it would be warm, there, if he has a minute to take a break.

“No,” the boy says, but he doesn’t elaborate.

Phil squints up at him. He’s suddenly self conscious of – what he looks like. Sitting there in the grass with a daisy absently tucked behind his ear, legs sprawled out, bundled in a real, new, cozy jacket that’s honestly probably overkill for this weather.

“Are you… alright?”

“No,” the boy says, under his breath, just barely loud enough for Phil to catch over the wind. 

They hardly know each other. They’ve spent enough time here to have a routine, or – something. Something that draws them both back to the stupid daisy patch every time, but Phil doesn’t even know the boy’s name. He doesn’t realize that until he’s watching him walk away.

\--

He’s never gone out two days in a row, but he makes a vague excuse to his gran about going down to the bank early the next morning. He slips out with two mugs of coffee and figures he can drink the second one himself if the boy doesn’t show up.

Phil sits on the wall and sips his mug. It’s a bit chilly, but he can stare at the view and listen to the birds all day, and there’s not much to do at home.

He’s forgotten almost entirely about why he’s here, until he hears the soft ruffle-and-thunk sound that the boy’s boots make in the grass.

He stops a few paces away, surveying the scene. Phil can’t look too closely, but he has a funny way of hesitating and considering everything, like he’s a prey animal and everything is a threat. He imagines the boy must have picked that up from being around them too much, which makes him want to laugh, but that might scare him off even more.

“You brought a picnic,” he says, eventually. 

“Um, I brought you a coffee. If you drink coffee, I mean. I wasn’t sure, but I – it seemed – um. Like I steal your daisies all the time. So. I owe you?”

The boy edges closer. He gives Phil the barest smile, but it looks – genuine, maybe, for once. He’s oddly quiet for how ridiculously tall he is, up close. He nods a little and mumbles a quiet _ thanks _ when Phil holds the mug out to him, before carefully hopping up on the wall, a bit away from Phil.

They sip their coffees in silence. Phil just studies the view down the road, as best as he can, but he catches the boy’s face quirk into a smile once in a while.

“Uh, so. It’s a bit late for this, but, I’m Phil, by the way.”

“Oh. Daniel. Dan, I guess. Nice to meet you.”

\--

“Have you eaten?” Dan says, out of the blue.

It’s one of the days when he shows up late. He doesn’t look as worn today as some days, but he’s dawdling over his coffee, taking long swigs and then quietly staring into space for ages.

“No,” Phil says. “Why? Should I start bringing you breakfast now, as well?”

Dan’s silent for a long time. Long enough that Phil worries that he might be treating this conversation like he’s treating his poor neglected coffee. 

He takes a deep breath, though, and says “Well, it’s lunch time. If you want to come to the house for a bit.”

\--

There’s a man working in the yard who looks just like Dan, only older. Phil steels himself to meet someone new, but Dan doesn’t even glance up as they pass.

The house is old and drafty, but it’s a home, in the way these old houses with years of practice at holding life inside them are. 

“Hello,” a voice says from another room.

“Hi, nan,” Dan calls back, pulling off his jacket and boots. He moves around the room with ease, like he could do it with his eyes closed.

“This is Phil,” he says as he rounds the corner into the kitchen and plops into a chair.

“Phil, and that’s all?”

“What?”

“Phil, no last name?”

“Lester,” Phil supplies. “May Walker’s grandson.”

“Oh, very good,” she says cheerfully, before levelling Dan with a look. “And you’ve invited him into our house with no idea who he is, then.”

“He steals daisies off the road,” Dan says, grinning around a mouthful of bread, like that explains it.

\--

They don’t go in for lunch again for a while. Sometimes Phil brings the coffee and they only sit for a minute before Dan mutters that he has to go tend to a poorly sheep or scrub the barn or whatever the task is for the day. He always seems irritated with it, like it’s interrupting the rest of his work, but as far as Phil can tell it seems like there’s always some new problem to be irate about, and maybe he ought to schedule a few open hours in there somewhere.

“It’s well cold,” Dan says one morning, in the middle of tucking his face down towards the lid like he’s hoping his travel mug will let off some meager steam. He grimaces, and then glances up at Phil with a hopeful look on his face. “We could drive to the house? Eat lunch? And I can slack off until my arse unfreezes?”

Phil shakes his head at the expression, but they bundle into the car.

Eating lunch with Dan and his nan is – lovely, actually. Dan talks more in fifteen minutes than Phil’s ever heard him say in the time they’ve known each other. He can barely get a word in edgewise, with the speed the conversation moves between the two Howells, but it’s sort of fun to listen in on them while he eats. They bicker in a way Phil wouldn’t dream of doing with his gran, but Dan’s seems happy enough to give and take in equal measure.

The man walks in just as they’re getting up to put their dishes in the sink.

“Who’s this, then,” he says to Dan’s nan.

“Phil Lester – he’s May’s grandson. May from church.”

Phil extends his hand to shake, but the man stares at it for a moment and then shakes his head and laughs. 

“Oh, no, you don’t want my muck on those.”

Phil smiles and glances over to see Dan’s reaction, to say something about his dad being funny, but – all he gets is a flash of his shoulders as he rounds the corner back into the entryway, and some thumping sounds as he pulls his boots back on.

\--

The next time, Dan drinks his coffee down in one go. They go in early and leave early. They pass Dan’s dad as they leave.

“We’re not in the habit of feeding strays,” he says to Dan, with a wide smile, like it’s a joke Phil doesn’t get.

\--

Dan doesn’t breathe a word as they walk back to Phil’s car. He doesn’t say much once they get there, either, just nudges his the toe of his boot against a rock and mutters something about the structure. 

“Do you. Uh. Want to come to dinner, sometime?”

“No.”

“As payment for the lunches,” Phil continues, “and all that. My gran makes cakes?”

Dan chews the inside of his cheek for a minute.

“Maybe,” he says, quiet.

\--

Dan doesn’t come for dinner. Phil tries to ask about it, one morning, but he just shrugs and goes quiet. He drinks his coffee in one go and says some things about some chore that Phil can’t really argue with, and next thing he knows he’s standing by the side of the road with his two mugs, looking for all the world like a lonely idiot.

\--

Phil’s hardly paying attention. His gran has people over for dinner all the time; she just likes roping them into eating her food and playing games and discussing her knitting when he’s not expressive enough. 

It’s getting a bit late, but a knock on the door and her cheerful people-are-here voice isn’t exactly something to get excited over.

_ “PHIL,” _ he hears, suddenly. “Oh, he’s up there, anyways, Daniel, go see him and find out if he’ll leave that television alone,” he hears just as he opens his door.

“Hey,” he says, as Dan tromps up the stairs. “My gran just let you in?” he asks, as Dan nudges the door closed.

“Church,” he says, shrugging, scratching absently at a scab on his hand. 

“Did you alrea–”

Phil is – up against the wall. There’s a warm body against his, and his lips are burning, and someone’s kissing him, and for a moment he’s so disoriented that he couldn’t tell you who or how this happened if his life depended on it.

His hand comes up, scrabbling reflexively. He’s so knobby, and tall, and –

Dan. Dan, it’s Dan, it’s _ Dan, _ he thinks, desperately clutching for an explanation. 

He tries to pull back for air.

Dan comes up at the same time, gasping. Phil can see now that his face is all splotchy and red and oddly discolored, from – the cold? Is it that cold out?

Dan blinks at him for a moment, and then he leaves.

\--

He wakes up in the middle of the night to some sound that he can’t really place. That’s the thing, out here; it’s just unfamiliar enough that Phil can never tell the difference between the ghosts and the normal sounds, because he doesn’t recognize the normal sounds in the first place. 

He falls back asleep for a while, but then a door opens and closes, which wakes him up again. This fucking town is supposed to be quiet, he thought.

He stares at the ceiling for a while before he gets up and goes to look out the window.

There’s a car sitting in the driveway.

It looks like Dan’s. That also means it looks like every other car in town.

He pulls on a sweatshirt and pads downstairs, out the door as quietly as he can.

Dan’s tucked away in the passenger seat, reclined all the way back with his earbuds in and an old raggedy-looking blanket pulled haphazardly around him. Phil raps his knuckles on the window.

Dan blinks up at him, with the same unplaceable look he’d had earlier. He reaches over and unlocks the car, though, and pushes the door open as Phil tries to pull.

“Hey,” Phil says.

Dan tugs the blanket back over his arms, burrowing deeper.

“Hey,” he says, quiet. 

Phil doesn’t actually know what to say after that, he realizes. He didn’t exactly expect that he would have a chance to say anything.

Dan squirms once or twice like he might start talking, but he’s as quiet as ever.

“You’re in my driveway,” Phil finally says. 

“I don’t – I don’t want – we – I had to go feed the cows their tea.”

How – what – Phil can hardly follow. It’s too early, and Dan is hardly making sense, and he just wants to go back to sleep so badly. He forgot to put shoes or even socks on, and the driveway is fucking cold at this hour.

“You don’t want what, Dan?”

“We’re. So. We’re friends, right?”

“Of course – what the fuck? – yeah, we’re friends.”

Dan fidgets some more. He chews his lip, and fusses with a stray thread, and dislodges the blanket again so he can wipe a speck of dirt off the dashboard with his finger. 

His jaw juts out, and he stares out the window, like if he doesn’t look at Phil then Phil can’t say anything he doesn’t want to hear.

“Phil. I don’t – have those,” he says, slowly, like he’s carefully picking through his words. “I don’t want. Like. To ruin that. So.”

“Can we go inside?”

“No.”

“Look – can we go inside, for a minute, so I can get myself a blanket, and some shoes, and then we can come back out, if you’re going to live in this car now?”

Dan studies him for a minute, and Phil can’t even bring himself to wonder why.

“No funny business?”

“No, Dan, no funny business. I just want shoes.”

They trudge back into the house in silence, Dan with his blanket around his shoulders like a ridiculous scratchy cape.

Phil goes upstairs to get an old blanket from the closet. He puts his jacket on, and then a hat, because why not. He eyes Dan, who’s wandering about after him like a lost dog.

“I’m going downstairs to get my shoes,” he says.

“No.”

“No?”

Dan shakes his head. “Can I sleep on the floor?”

He is literally the most annoying person Phil has ever let into his house at three o’clock in the morning.

“Fine,” he says, going back to the stupid cupboard to get a stupid pillow for this stupid idiot that’s in his stupid house.

He strips off his hat and his jacket and his sweatshirt and dumps them all on top of the little desk in the corner while Dan arranges a little nest on the floor. He climbs into his bed, alone, because Dan didn’t offer, and he’s too tired to argue about the merits of not sleeping on the floor so you don’t need a chiropractor in the morning. He’s just – deflated, he realizes. The anger and the worry and the confusion – it’s gone, and he’s just sleepy for once.

“Sorry,” Dan says, once the light’s out.

“It’s fine,” he says. 

They fall silent for a while. 

“Dan? It doesn’t have to be like that, you know?”

“What?”

“Like. My ex and I? We were friends, and then we dated for a while, and then we broke up, but – it didn’t ruin anything. I don’t – bring him coffee every morning, anymore, I guess, but we were still friends when we were together. We’re friends now. We just get along, you know? That’s why it worked. You have to – you have to like someone, anyways. I think.”

“Okay.”

“I like you,” Phil says, quietly, “I just – I think it could work. If you want.”

\--

Dan’s alarm starts up at an ungodly hour. Phil’s dipping in and out of a dream, and doesn’t realize until much later what the musical break in his weird nightmare was about, but he feels Dan’s fingers brush his hair back, once, just before he leaves.

\-- 

“What are you doing here?” Dan says, smiling. His dog – the little elderly shepherd that Phil’s seen lying in the yard or sprawled in the doorway to the house, sometimes – trots at his feet, panting happily.

“What’re _ you _ doing here?” Phil retorts as he passes Dan’s mug over the wall. “It’s too early.”

“Did I wake you up?”

Phil shrugs, swinging his feet so the heels of his trainers bounce off the rocks. 

“Doesn’t matter. I fell back asleep.”

\-- 

They finally add each other on Instagram. Dan doesn’t use anything else, apparently, and he hardly even uses that, from what Phil can tell. 

There’s a few posts from ages ago, of a ridiculously young Dan in a church choir. There’s another from around then of him mucking about in a muddy music festival field with some other boys.

More recently, there’s few of Dan in – Manchester? He hasn’t learned how to tag his location, or he just doesn’t. Phil only guesses Manchester because the background of one of them looks like a place Martyn has sent him pictures of. There’s a cluster of other posts from around then, mostly of Dan and a few girls drinking in various parts of the city.

He asks Dan why he hasn’t used it recently, once, and Dan shrugs.

“Why would I want people to know where I am?” he says, but there’s no real heat behind it.

Phil realizes that he’s really – become something of an indoor person, since he graduated. Other than going to see Dan, for half an hour in the mornings, he’s happy enough to stay in his gran’s house and potter around until she needs him. He went out in York plenty, but his group of friends scattered immediately after, and his version of a party now is having a cocktail with his gran’s board game club and getting swept away in drama about people from church that he doesn’t really remember.

\--

“D’you want to go out, some time?” Phil blurts out one morning. “Like, to a bar?”

“No, that’s fine.”

“Really? It’s just that it seemed like – when you gave me your Instagram – there’s all these pictures of you out having adventures, and I didn’t – I don’t want you to feel trapped, because I didn’t – “

“Phil,” he says, interrupting, “It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“I don’t think I drink anymore.”

Phil blinks. “You don’t?”

Dan’s face breaks into a little smile. He bumps his shoulder into Phil’s. “Yeah, mate,” he says. “I live on a sheep farm and I stopped running away to go to the pub. What’s your superpower?”

“I’m really flexible.”

Dan goes quiet for a minute. Phil looks over, and he’s beet red. His eyebrows are headed for outer space.

“Oookay,” Dan says, slowly.

_ "You _ made it weird, Daniel,” he says.

“Actually, no, that came out of your mouth? I was having a normal day before you started talking.”

“Wasn’t interesting, though,” Phil mutters, which makes Dan laugh. 

Phil loves it when he gets Dan to crack. It’s not exactly often, but his whole face lights up like the sun, and once he gets going, sometimes he can go forever. Phil feels like he knows a secret, knowing that a loud, effervescent version of Dan is hiding somewhere in there whenever they talk.

He takes a long drink of coffee. Dan’s starting to get that faraway look like he’s off in his own head, listing what needs to get done.

“Why’d you stop? Like, can I ask?”

Dan blinks back into the present. He shrugs.

“I went to uni. I stopped, uh, after that, I guess.”

“Sorry – you went to uni?”

Dan makes a face.

“Could you try sounding less surprised about everything today, mate? For a year. Manchester. And then I came home, because we, uh, ran out of money for it.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugs again. He looks a bit – deflated.

“I think… I think we had it, but it was just that – my dad wasn’t – he wasn’t extremely fond of… who I started to become.”

“Because you were – like, partying? Or – ?”

“No. I wasn’t even. I mean, not that much. I just – I started a degree in plant science, because it seemed useful. For management, you know? I took some business courses. We’d always just sort of… let those parts fall where they may, when I was a kid, and I wanted to – I wanted us to be _ good _ at it, for once. And then I came home for Christmas, and we fought every minute, basically. He wants to do things his way, and I want to do them the way we _ should _ do it, and now we’re just. Here, like. Doing separate sides of the place because I talk too much. I’m not that useful now, I guess.”

“You work all the time, though.”

“Sure. But it’s – I don’t do it the same. He says, like, do this in the barn, or whatever, and I do, but… it’s never right, anymore. I’m not just a copy of him that – well. Nevermind, that’s grim,” Dan says, looking down. He rubs a thumb over the edge of one of the rocks on the wall, methodical.

“Sorry,” he says. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

Dan’s quiet for a long time. He won’t meet Phil’s eyes, even though Phil can’t stop looking, too scared to turn away and study the view of the valley like he would’ve a week ago. 

“I’m just waiting for him to die, I think,” he says, softly, still rubbing the pad of his thumb back and forth.

Phil’s grateful, honestly, that Dan isn’t paying enough attention to see the look on his face.

“Like Prince Charles,” he says, eventually, stilted even to his own ears. It’s enough to startle a little laugh out of Dan.

“Yeah. Me ‘n Chuck, I guess. Only I wouldn’t make it to seventy.”

\--

Dan’s quiet today, but he’s dawdling, too, so Phil can’t complain. Phil’s leaning back on his hands, letting the warm sun wash over his face. His own coffee ran dry ages ago. Dan’s still working on his, glacially slow.

Dan reaches over and puts his hand next to Phil’s. He crosses their pinkies, wiggles his a little. Phil looks over, and Dan’s just watching him.

“Hi. What’re you doing here?” he says, casual, trying not to look too pleased.

Dan grins, sucking the edge of his lower lip between his teeth.

“You’re the one trespassing on _ my _ property,” he says.

\--

There’s a lot of Dan to explore. A lot of it catches Phil off guard, if he’s completely honest.

There’s some things that are just nice, in a generic sort of way. He’s skinnier than anyone Phil’s been with, but he has nice arms, good legs, all that.

It’s – the rest. The things Phil never had to put much thought to with the guys he met at uni. There’s the massive, gnarled, mottled scar just under his knee cap, which Dan absently describes as an accident in the barn when he was little. The litany of smaller gouges, which he sometimes has stories for, but mostly he just shrugs and says they weren’t notable. The way his right elbow only bends part of the way before he grimaces, which Phil somehow didn’t notice until now. The way his knees and ankles click loudly in the quiet darkness of Phil’s room, every time he shifts or rolls or flexes them at all. The way he groans and leans into it if Phil so much as brushes a hand over the wadded muscle in his shoulders. The way he’s sometimes so bone-tired, by the time Phil lets him in, that he can barely keep his eyes open long enough to walk up the stairs. 

“What’re you doing?” Dan murmurs sleepily when he catches Phil tracing a scar on the arm with the funny elbow.

“Sorry,” Phil says automatically, pulling his hand away, at a loss for what his point was.

_ Being alive is so delicate, _ he finally thinks ages later, after Dan’s already fallen back asleep.

\--

“I crashed a four-by-four into that wall,” he says, absently tracing a finger along the ridges of Phil’s bare rib cage.

“What? Today?”

“No, like. You asked me – a while ago, why I stopped drinking? I didn’t really answer your question. I stopped because I crashed my dad’s four-by-four into that wall.”

“Oh. Which wall?”

“The wall. The one I just had to rebuild.”

“Our wall?”

Dan rolls his eyes.

“Sure, Phil,” he says, “_ our _ wall, you sap.”

Phil shifts so he can pull Dan into a clumsy horizontal bear hug, peppering kisses all over his face before he gets to his lips.

“I’m being strangled by a mean octopus,” Dan squawks as soon as they come up for air, flailing stubbornly.

“Shh! You’ll wake my gran up.”

“Don’t _ shush _ me,” he retorts, but in a whisper this time. 

\--

“I hate that fucking ram,” Dan mutters, trudging back towards Phil.

“Which one?”

“Oh, all of them. But that one, especially, on the far right there. He’s a bastard. He got me right in the balls a few months ago.”

“How do you tell them apart?”

Dan blinks. 

“Phil, it’s the one I’ve painted entirely blue. So I can see him from a mile out.”

Phil grins up at him, squinting into the sun.

“Oh, I thought it was born that way. Sorry.”

Dan rolls his eyes as he hops back up on the wall. 

“Sure, mate. It’s our new thing, we’re breeding blue sheep to sell to fancy restaurants in the city,” he says. He yawns and drops his head so his forehead rests on Phil’s shoulder. “You kept me up too late. I’m an old man now.”

“It’s funny that you like it out here even though there’s sheep trying to give you a vasectomy.”

Dan’s quiet for just long enough that Phil turns to try to look at him, dislodging Dan from his napping spot.

“Right? I mean – you like it?”

Dan shrugs, sitting up.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What?”

He shrugs again, stuffing his hands deep in his pockets and crossing his legs at the ankle.

“It doesn’t matter, mate. This place has been here for four hundred years. You think every man in my family for hundreds of years has woken up every spring and thought, aye, my dream for this year is that I’d love to put my whole bare hand up a sheep’s vagina?”

Phil can’t help the grimace. 

Dan laughs, and pokes him in the side. “Oh – you don’t want to hear more about sheep fisting? Fine, city boy.”

\--

“The problem with her jam is that it’s the right flavor but not the right consistency,” Dan is saying, animated. “It’s wet, but it’s too chunky! I love jam chunks as much as the next man but I don’t want to eat a whole fruit in there, you know? It’s just not right.”

His nan is impressively patient when she listens. She’s fussing with something in the kitchen, but she’ll look up and make enough vague approving noises to make it seem like she really cares about Dan’s jam drama.

Phil catches her eye over Dan’s shoulder and tries to copy Dan’s elaborate hand motions. She doesn’t quite crack, but she gets a glint in her eye. Dan whips around, frowning.

“Philip – don’t tell me you’re gossiping with my nan about me while I’m right here?”

“I didn’t say anything!” Phil and his nan both say in chorus.

\--

Phil offers a hand, sometimes. When Dan seems particularly overwhelmed.

Dan brushes it off, over and over.

“I can actually do stuff, you know,” he says, the millionth time Dan dodges his offer. “I did work experience with a vet.”

“Seriously?”

“Can you try looking less surprised about everything,” Phil parrots back, grinning.

“No, I just mean, I thought your degree was in English?”

“Well. I passed out during a surgery on a dog, and they basically kicked me out after that, but I got through the first bit of training. I can do a bandage and an intramuscular shot and – uh, I can spray aluspray everywhere. _ Everything _ gets disinfected when I’m around.”

Dan laughs, at that. He drifts like he’s really thinking about it.

“I don’t want you to come here because you have to,” he finally says. “If I give you one thing, there’ll be ten more things behind it, and then I’ll get used to having you around when I’m too busy.”

“I don’t mind, though. I can help every morning if it makes it easier. It’s not like I’m busy otherwise,” Phil says.

Dan nods, vaguely, glancing up at the ridge.

“Yeah. I’m good today, but I’ll let you know if something comes up.”

\--

Dan’s hair’s gotten long and wild, and Phil can see it getting whipped by the wind from the moment he pops over the ridge.

“Can we get in the car?” he says as soon as he gets to Phil. “It’s fucking cold.”

Phil nods.

They scramble into the back seat, where there’s more space. Dan starts out just sitting next to him, but Phil gets an arm around him and needles and rearranges until Dan is mostly in his lap. He rubs a hand over Dan’s arm under his stupidly thin sweater.

“I thought it would be warmer,” Dan says, miserably. He’s dropped his head to rest on Phil, tucked into where his neck meets his shoulder.

“D’you want a ride to your house to get a jacket?”

“No, I’m already behind.”

“Do you want my jacket?”

“That’s okay.”

They fall quiet for a while. Phil absently kisses Dan’s hair and runs a hand over what he can reach, trying to get some semblance of circulation going before Dan has to venture back out. Dan’s muscles slowly start to relax from their tense shivering, but he doesn’t move to leave quite yet.

“Is there anything else I can do?”

Dan shakes his head. Phil feels it more than he sees it. “Just be here.”

“Other than that?”

Dan tugs at a loose thread and twists it around his finger. “I don’t, like, mean to be intense, but you’re literally the only person I see who talks to me for the sake of it and not because of the farm, Phil.”

“Oh.”

“I mean. That’s a lot. You don’t – I don’t want you to feel like you have to do that, either. I just mean – I want to keep them separate, like. I like you and I don’t… want that mixed up. Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

Phil shakes his head, tugging him closer. “No,” he says. “No, I didn’t realize. It’s good you told me.”

\--

Phil’s bank account is running absurdly low, but he uses just about the last of it to buy a cheap blanket and a new hat. They’re well into autumn, now, and you never know when someone might need it.

\--

Dan keeps fussing with the blanket on Phil’s bed, tugging it closer around them. He shoves his cold nose against Phil’s neck and tries to tuck his cold hands under Phil’s sweatshirt, which makes Phil yelp and kick at him before he can think to stop.

“Deserved that,” Dan mutters. “Sorry.”

“Are you?”

Dan hums vaguely, wiggling closer again. 

“How was it today?” Phil says, curling an arm around so he can dig a hand in Dan’s curls the way he likes.

“Muddy.”

“Sorry.”

“Are you in charge?”

“Of the weather? Yeah. I can turn it off. You didn’t know that?”

Dan huffs, but Phil can feel him smile a little. “Could’ve told me before I went swimming in a puddle of liquid shit, Phil, thanks.”

They fall quiet, Dan dozing and Phil running through the million random things knocking around in his head.

“Do you ever like it?” he blurts out, even though he’s not entirely sure if Dan’s awake.

Dan shifts a bit. “Some days, I guess.”

“What’s good about them?”

“When the weather’s nice and nothing goes wrong,” he mumbles into Phil’s chest.

“How often is that?”

“Mm, never. Maybe once in the summer I’ll get both in a day. It’s like a second Christmas.”

“D’you get – lonely? Is that – is that what it is?” 

Dan tilts his face up at that, meeting Phil’s gaze in the dark of his room. 

“You’ve got a lot of questions today, huh?” he says after a beat, but there’s no heat behind it.

“I always have questions. I just… wonder sometimes. You know?” Dan drops his head back on Phil’s shoulder and nods a little, mussing his curls.

“I – try not to think about it, I guess,” he starts, slowly. “It’s, like. I’d always thought I liked it here, and that coming home wouldn’t be so bad, but… I think I just liked some of the people that I grew up with. And I liked having something I was really good at, when I was a kid and school was shitty. And now I’m here and I don’t – have either of those, really.” 

He swallows, and Phil can feel him shift a bit, awkwardly. He tries to stay quiet, waiting.

“Sorry. I don’t know if that makes sense? I talked to my nan about it, once, but I can’t – I don’t – I think I have to stop wallowing in it, or it’s too much to like, wake up and go out every morning. So. I guess it isn’t, but – yeah, it is. Yeah, a lot of the time, it is,” he finishes, hesitant.

“That makes sense,” Phil says, quiet. Dan reaches over and tangles their fingers together, carefully.

“Thanks. Any other questions that I can answer in five seconds, before I fall asleep?”

\--

“You have such nice hands,” Phil gasps. He can’t see them right now, but he can feel them solid on his back, strong and warm and comically large.

Dan blinks, pausing. 

Phil bounces on his feet a little bit so he can plant another kiss on him, even though Dan is entirely not helpful, just standing there blinking down at him from a hundred feet up. 

Dan shifts so his left hand’s between them instead, leans back a little so he can look at it. Phil whines a little at the loss. 

“Phil, I’m like, pretty sure they’re literally getting blood on your shirt,” he says, closing his fist to show the red nicks where his knuckles have cracked in the cold.

“Shut up. I don’t care if they’re a biohazard zone, I like them so much. Come down here,” Phil says, tugging a little.

“Hands only a Phil could love,” Dan mutters, but he relents anyways.

\--

_ cant drve can u give ride down hill? _

Phil blinks down at the message. Dan texts him sometimes, but. Mostly when he’s goofing off, sending Phil stupid cat videos he finds on instagram. 

They don’t talk about plans, or anything important, really. Phil asked, once, and Dan had said that he’s out of service range most of the time. He doesn’t like sending anything when he can walk over the ridge in a minute and lose service for two hours, come out of the interaction seeming stand-offish and mean. He’s had too many mishaps over the years. 

Phil – doesn’t want to think about the rest of it.

He calls instead, in case he needs to catch Dan before – something.

“Hey, are you home?” he says before Dan can even say hello.

“Yeah, ‘m home,” Dan says. He sounds – like – Phil doesn’t know what that sounds like, with Dan. He doesn’t know what should scare him.

“I’ll be up there in ten minutes, okay?”

Dan’s silent for a while, just breathing quietly on the other end.

“‘Kay,” he finally says. 

Phil hangs up before he can say anything he shouldn’t. He gets in the car and drives up the hill on autopilot. He pulls into the driveway and knocks on the door. He rings the doorbell, too, but no one answers. 

His phone vibrates in his pocket.

_ behnd barn _

_ sorry _

Phil finds him sitting in the mud along the back wall, head tilted back against the rocks.

“Dan, are you – drunk?” he blurts out before he can stop himself. “Why can’t you fucking drive, mate?”

“Oh,” Dan says, very softly, cringing away from the sudden sound.

“Are – what – are you hungover? It’s like – six in the afternoon? What – when –”

“Hurts, Phil,” Dan murmurs.

Phil plops down heavily next to him, baffled.

“Dan, _ what _hurts? Your head?”

Dan’s hand comes out of his pocket. He moves to reach for his head, carefully tilting his face down so Phil can peer around at the part on the back that –

Oh, jesus, fuck. Oh, Phil is going to vomit.

“Oh,” he says, entirely lost for words. “Dan, that’s – ” he squeezes his eyes shut and takes a hard breath, tries to settle the roiling waves in his stomach. “Dan, love, can we stand up?”

Dan shakes his head minutely, and then immediately looks like he regrets it. 

“Okay. Stay here, okay?”

Phil goes and gets his car. He can barely get the key in the ignition. He backs up carefully across the driveway, snaking around until he’s as close as he can.

He tries holding Dan under his arms, first, but they only get part of the way before Dan starts to sag out of his grip, and he has to quickly figure out how to lower him back without letting his – that, anything, hit the wall too fast.

_ Sorry, I’m so sorry, _ he hears himself babbling, over and over.

Dan has his jaw clenched, and his eyes squeezed tight.

He pulls out his phone, as if to call an ambulance, but it says No Service. He knew that. He knew that, but he thought maybe there’d be a magic button, some workaround.

“Dan, love? Where’s your dad? Are – are they coming home soon?" 

“Auction,” he says, strained around the consonants. “No.”

“Fuck,” Phil says, shaky. “Okay. Okay. We can do this. One second.” 

They finally manage it, with Dan’s arm around his shoulder and Phil’s around his waist. There’s a second where Phil has to lurch to his own feet in one go and hope everything holds. He’s suddenly gripped with terror that he’s going to drop Dan entirely and make everything immeasurably worse. It works, though. They’re standing, finally, and he’s got Dan in his arms, breathing hard.

They manage to get in the car without too much fuss. Phil finds the cheap blanket he’d left in the back and carefully wedges it behind Dan’s head before they go.

His hands are still shaking when he gets the key in, and he can’t stop glancing over as he drives.

“Dan, you sleeping?” he asks, about halfway down. 

“Uh-uh.” 

“Can you – they’re gonna need, uh. Information? When we get there. Do you remember what happened?”

Dan’s quiet for a long time, and his eyes are still closed, and Phil isn’t entirely sure that he asked in time.

“‘S a cow. Pushed me. Wall? Dunno ‘fter that.” 

“Okay,” Phil says, trying his level best to keep his voice even. “Okay, love, thanks.”

\--

There’s not actually that much Phil can do, once they get there. The nurse asks him a few questions, when Dan’s answers don’t make much sense, but it quickly becomes clear that he doesn’t actually know the answer to what Dan’s proper address is, or his birthday, or if he’s had a head injury before.

\--

Nan gives him a hug, when she finds him still sitting in the waiting room. 

“Thanks, child,” she says. It reminds him too much of his mum, in a way that makes him want to cry, just knowing that there’s someone more qualified around. “You’ve been good to him.”

\--

He wakes up to her having a quiet argument on her phone, from the chair a few down from his.

“ – I know,” she’s saying. “I know, but it’s not like that now, and it won’t do to have him there when you know it’s not right. – No, I know that. But it’s – George – Fine, bye.” 

She catches his eye, after a moment, and gives him a look that reminds him too much of Dan, in a slightly spooky way.

“They’re pests, aren’t they? Both of them.”

“His dad, too?” 

“Oh, you can’t imagine. Like trying to get milk out of a turnip, every time either of them has to admit they’re wrong.”

\--

She leaves to take over Dan’s share of the chores, after another phone call, muttering something under her breath about her son and giving Phil another hug before she goes.

Dan finally gets discharged early in the morning. The doctor looks a bit skeptical, but she lets Phil into the room while she gives Dan a summary of what’s to come, in case he forgets, and she hands Phil the papers when they leave. 

“Your nan said I could take you home, if you want,” he says as they walk out to Phil’s car. “Or you can stay with me, if you’d rather? I just said I’d let her know.” 

Dan’s shivering in the wet air outside, for the millionth time. Phil realizes he completely forgot to ask if his nan could bring him a jacket.

“Could we go to yours? It hurts more when I move. I don’t really want to drive up there.”

\--

Dan sleeps for ages, once they get home, but he seems like he’s doing better than he was. He takes his painkillers without too much prodding. He manages to sit with Phil and his gran through most of dinner, and eats well enough. Phil goes upstairs with him afterwards and follows him around, making sure the toothpaste is easy to find and the blankets are stacked tall enough and the light from the neighbor’s back porch isn’t going to be a bother, even though Phil has no control over that last one.

\--

His nan comes to pick him up the next morning, just before noon. She seems – steady, Phil thinks. Like his mum is when he’s out of sorts. She pats Phil on the arm and thanks him again; she keeps an eye on Dan and looks through the bag she’d left at the hospital to make sure his things haven’t wandered. She gives Phil one last wave as they leave, not quite smiling but not looking nearly as stretched-thin as he feels.

\--

Phil gets a call minutes before dinner.

“Hi, how are you?”

“Can you come pick me up?” Dan says, no preamble. His voice still sounds funny, even after a few days, all rough and soft and rounded at the edges like he’s struggling to get his words out. 

“Yeah, ten minutes?”

“Okay.”

\--

Dan’s standing on the stoop when he pulls in, eyes closed, the bag from this morning again slung over his shoulder.

“You told your nan, right?” he asks, once he’s rolled down his window.

“Yeah,” Dan says, climbing in and slamming the door.

Dan doesn’t talk much on the ride back down, and Phil’s not sure if he should ask. 

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” Dan says, “I just don’t know if I can do this.”

“It’ll get better,” he says, automatic. He’s – read some things. About how concussions can feel like they’re endless, like a tunnel with no light at the exit.

Dan studies him for a minute, but he doesn’t say anything more.

\--

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Dan says, into the quiet darkness of Phil’s room. 

He’s not sure what time it is. They’ve had the shades drawn for so long, he’s pretty sure it’s just late at night, but maybe it’s early morning. Dan’s apparently developed a habit of just laying there silently, like he’s asleep, but not sleeping. Once in a while he’ll blurt out some random thought, and Phil’s been too wound up to fall asleep between them. 

“Nevermind,” Dan adds in the middle of Phil’s pause. He rolls over and tugs at Phil’s hand until they’re arranged the way he wants, and that’s the end of that.

\--

“I don’t know if I can do this,” he says again as Phil blinks awake. He’s disoriented for a moment before he realizes his pillow is Dan’s shoulder. There’s light that doesn’t look artificial, peeking in a bit from outside. 

“What part?” Phil asks, not sure if he wants to hear the answer. He seems – more sure, this time, like he’s decided something.

Dan gives him a vaguely startled look, like he didn’t expect Phil to actually react. He chews on his thumbnail for a minute, pulling Phil closer with his other arm, like he needs something solid.

“I think it’s the farm,” he says, finally. “I don’t think I can go back to the farm.”

**Author's Note:**

> Big big big thank you to dayevsphil for instigating, cheerleading, & also betaing this! Daye says you can forward any complaints to [their inbox, which I am helpfully providing a link to now.](https://dayevsphil.tumblr.com/ask)
> 
> Come find me at [@chickenfreeblog](chickenfreeblog.tumblr.com) on tumblr, where we're discussing whether Dan should buy an eighth parrot.


End file.
